By Patrick Macias

Following up on part one, here’s (Dark Horse Comics Manga editor) Carl Horn’s follow-up to yesterday’s discussion. For context, my comments on the films (debatable) connection to Mamoru Oshii are reproduced below in italics.

PATRICK

Shin Godzilla’s plot device of the missing scientist “Goro Maki” leaving clues from beyond the grave reminds me of other off-stage, disembodied characters that periodically appear in anime, like the various puppet masters in the Ghost in the Shell series or the ghostly terrorists in the Patlabor films. They make me think of absentee fathers or distant trickster gods that cannot be understood or defeated by conventional means (in Hollywood movies, these types usually get punched out by the hero at the end of act three). Where does this archetype come from?

The Last Testament of Goro Maki in Shin Godzilla

I’m not saying that anyone is ripping anyone off here, but are enough of these offstage types manipulating plots throughout otaku culture to make me feel like there is an unnamed genre now, and that Mamoru Oshii has been their prime mover (although Shinji's dad in Eva is so remote that he nearly qualifies as "permanently absent" in my book).

Speaking of Patlabor, the 3rd movie, WXII (not by Oshii) was also very much a revisionist monster on the loose film that might have some parallels to Shin Godzilla...

A difference is that Oshii was bringing politikto what was ostensibly a children’s medium (similar to what Frank Miller and Alan Moore were doing with the graphic novel around the same time) that was already acquainted with sex, death, and war... whereas Godzilla films have openly dealt with the atomic age and military-industrial concerns since the beginning in 1954, only to become kid’s entertainment as they evolved.

CARL GUSTAV HORN

Shin Godzilla Does Tokyo

I realize this is the eternal question in kaiju movies, but I missed something on the first screening that might be connected to your point about Goro Maki--namely, does anyone in the film come up with a theory as to why Godzilla came to Tokyo? Tokyo in particular, since, as gets pointed out in the story, Japan is a big island to defend. Of course, for the sake of tradition (and the audience relating), it has to be Tokyo, but what I mean is, does anyone in Shin Godzilla formulate a rationale for it in the best otaku tradition, the way they speculate on other aspects of the creature?

I say Godzilla "came to" Tokyo, because it's not evident that Godzilla is attacking Tokyo per se, any more than you're attacking any bugs you might happen to be walking upon. Where exactly was Godzilla headed when the SDF first tried to bring him down? Is he being lured there in some fashion, perhaps according to a scheme set in motion by (missing scientist) Goro Maki? Maybe the abandoned yacht in the bay was the lure--but then why leave the bay and start heading upriver?

In an ironic reflection of the SDF's role, it also wasn't clear to me that Godzilla ever unleashes his weapons to "destroy Tokyo," only to defend himself. In fact, it's not even clear his gouts of flame and laser beams are "weapons." A lot of what happens seems like a response to injury. It's almost like, if you drop a bomb on a nuclear reactor and it starts spewing out superheated steam and radiation, do you then say the reactor is "attacking" you? This raises another irony--maybe there would have been less destruction if the SDF had not resisted and just let Godzilla go wherever it was going in the first place, although if true that's only hindsight--it's not like you could tell any government "just let it stomp--if you provoke it, it will become more dangerous," even if that is actually true.

Fishing for monsters in Patlabor WXIII

You make a good comparison of Shin Godzilla to the third Patlabor movie (WXIII), and I also remember your comment when WXIII came out on how well the film depicted the real, workaday Tokyo (rather than the romantic one of neon and giant screens), just as Shin Godzilla does. Unlike the first two Patlabor films, Oshii did not direct WXIII, of course, but it's worthwhile to compare backgrounds at this point. Oshii and Anno are only nine years apart in age--but when you fit them into post-war Japan, those nine years may be critical in shaping their political perspectives.

Oshii was of the last generation of Japanese youth to be associated with political activism and even radicalism. He was an eight year-old in Tokyo during the massive ANPO protests of 1960--when he was 20, the Red Army was in full effect; he talks about the atmosphere of those days with Naoki Yamamoto in his recent manga series, Red. When Anno was 20, he was making Ultraman films for class credit. Things in the game done changed. Otaku would one day be linked with the AUM cult, but I submit that kind of homegrown apocalyptic cult (Galapagos terror, if you will) was not connected to the networks of radical world politics the way the Red Army was.

Coup by kaiju in Shin GodzillaShin Godzilla is both more and less a depiction of radical politics in Japan than Oshii's Patlabor 2--and by radical, I mean the use of open violence to achieve political change. Less, because Patlabor 2's antagonist seeks to provoke change by using attacks against roads, communications, and materiel to create every appearance of a coup but the coup itself--i.e., his targets are not the physical persons of Japan's leadership. But more, because Shin Godzilla's narrative actually goes that far. Not to be overlooked in Anno's equation is the script's decapitating strike that kills Japan's senior leadership, leaving a clearer path for the younger people to execute their plan. You couldn't call it a "coup," for the same reason you couldn't call what Godzilla does an "attack." Nevertheless, it has the practical effect of a coup, and perhaps Mr. Abe, whose cabinet members average age 60, should take a closer look at what the film might be saying.

Dark Horse Manga Editor and anime brain bug Carl Gustav Hornsaw Shin Godzilla last night and we’ve been emailing each other all day back and forth about it. Here’s some highlights from our correspondence.

Carl wrote a shorter piece about the links between Shin Godzilla and Neon Genesis Evangelion for the Dark Horse blog before seeing the film. Read here.

CARL GUSTAV HORN

I say that my most selfish desire as an otaku is for the artists I like to challenge themselves and grow. Shin Godzilla has indulged that selfishness. An admirable, thrilling, sobering work first of all for a fan of Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi, even before one considers it as a Godzilla film or kaiju film. They thrust forward all their knowledge, all their enthusiasm, all their affection as otaku into making this, yet with a sharpened edge of discipline, perspective and judgment as filmmakers. Despite the captions and jargon, the narrative is rapid, assured, without a sense of bloat or contrivance. There are few false notes in it.

Before the screening was a run of trailers for Hollywood CG-fests made for the American and Chinese markets; more false than their effects was any sense of risk or consequences. Exciting as it often is, Shin Godzilla is nobody's thrill ride of the summer. It's a real film, and in watching you feel the stakes for a real people and a real nation. The best part? Anno and Higuchi's vision paid off, connecting with the Japanese public and box office. Some might say this movie is appealing to nationalism, but I dare say the most patriotic thing of all about the film is that it holds its nation's audiences in higher regard than Japanese studios usually do.

PATRICK MACIAS

A lot of press is being written about how the film is thinly disguised right-wing “strong Japan” propaganda, especially with regards to how the Self Defense Forces are portrayed in the film. But... the army gets their asses kicked by Godzilla and fails to achieve much of anything on their own. It’s really the private sector (industry and a bunch of misfit outsiders) who save the day at the end, and the framing enforces this by having the army guys stand in the back during the final operation, reduced to a supporting role.

Still, the SDF hook is too irresistible to not play out in the media, especially when Abe’s quotes like “I think that [Godzilla’s] popularity is rooted in the unwavering support that the public has for the Self-Defense Forces” are being printed in the Washington Post. Some US-writers are now wrongly assuming that Anno-Higuchi are in favor of this illusion, too...

Funny, since using a monster movie where the army loses as a recruitment tool is, as my friend Yoshiki Takahashi puts it, “like using The Matrix to try and recruit security guards.”

CARL

I think if critics were to think twice about it (and they should, if they're going to bring a political analysis) the film lends no support to Abe's big policy push: amending Article 9 so the SDF can use force abroad (as opposed to the non-combatant support they've done in Iraq, Cambodia, etc.). An example the LDP gives is sending ships of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force to support the U.S. Navy in Korea in the event of a crisis there.

A metaphor for that might have been if Anno and Higuchi had written the script so that Godzilla is first discovered on a distant Pacific island; experts believe the creature will soon head for Japan--should Japan send the SDF to do a pre-emptive strike on the island? This, of course, resembles how America would view the situation, and if I recall, the film cites a 17% chance Godzilla will strike the U.S. West Coast as part of the justification to nuke it beforehand.

But Shin Godzilla is written so the SDF doesn't come into play until Godzilla is literally inside the 23 wards--nobody could say their role in the movie is anything but domestic self-defense. It's even more circumspect than the original 1954 film, where the monster originally appears in the outer islands (albeit Japanese territory) and the government in fact dispatches naval ships to try and kill it with depth charges; only after that does Godzilla strike Tokyo itself.

This brings up an interesting question, which you'd know better than I--what did the Japanese Left, which was much more militant in the 1950s, think about the original films? Did they have any opinion? In other words, is this not a new controversy? I'm reminded of that book you introduced me to, Licence to Thrill, which covered the history of 007 as seen by the British press, including some of their political perspectives.

There's at least four political frameworks that are addressed in Shin Godzilla:domestic Japanese decision-making, the presentation and role of the SDF as a discrete institution, the U.S.-Japan relationship, and the relationship of Japan to the UN Security Council. This last framework is written as critical to the script, and in my view shows Shin Godzilla to have more to say about Japan's place in the world than just "we're America's Neil Connery."

PATRICK

Shin Godzilla’s plot device of the missing scientist “Goro Maki” leaving clues from beyond the grave reminds me of other off-stage, disembodied characters that periodically appear in anime, like the various puppet masters in the Ghost in the Shell series or the ghostly terrorists in the Patlabor films. They make me think of absentee fathers or distant trickster gods that cannot be understood or defeated by conventional means (in Hollywood movies, these types usually get punched out by the hero at the end of act three). Where does this archetype come from?

I’m not saying that anyone is ripping anyone off here, but are enough of these offstage types manipulating plots throughout otaku culture to make me feel like there is an unnamed genre now, and that Mamoru Oshii has been their prime mover (although Shinji's dad in Eva is so remote that he nearly qualifies as "permanently absent" in my book).

Speaking of Patlabor, the 3rd movie, WXII (not by Oshii) was also very much a revisionist monster on the loose film that might have some parallels to Shin Godzilla...

A difference is that Oshii was bringing politik to what was ostensibly a children’s medium (similar to what Frank Miller and Alan Moore were doing with the graphic novel around the same time) that was already acquainted with sex, death, and war... whereas Godzilla films have openly dealt with the atomic age and military-industrial concerns since the beginning in 1954, only to become kid’s entertainment as they evolved.

I watched 1964’s Mothra Vs. Godzilla a few days ago, and there’s an entire sequence showing the US military trying to stop Godzilla on their own Uncle Sam's “Frontier Missile” technology…and failing… that was filmed for the foreign market and not to be shown in Japanese prints. I wonder what would happen if this sort of thing was released today. Oh wait, it just was sorta...